BerthaBlog

Some random glimpses of turmoil, in varying degrees of force and locality:

Hanna’s been and gone. She breezed through like the party-girl friend you had in college: everyone got all excited when they heard she was coming, we made a lot of plans and preparations, she staggered in during the wee hours of the morning, blew around at random having a good time and making a mess, and then she was gone and we were left with the cleanup. There were some areas flooded, some without power, and one small community whose only road in or out got washed away. But mostly we’re fine. In my neighborhood we never lost power and didn’t even get a lot of branches down.

Meanwhile, her rowdier brother Ike is looking to crash on Texas or New Orleans’ couch this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed for folks like LawDog and Ambulance Driver, who may be stuck with this unwelcome visitor.

I’m not a big fan of getting older, but I’ll definitely be glad when I don’t have a period any more. Damn thing is getting to be a right vicious bitch. I spent most of Sunday on the couch, feeling like someone had been using my abdomen as a punching bag. I’m beginning to wonder if my uterus isn’t tearing itself loose a piece at a time, a theory supported by the thumb-sized clots I passed in the shower this morning. Seriously, the place looked like an abattoir. Fortunately my menstrual Niagra is generally short-lived; two or three days of misery and then it’s gone. Like everything else I do, I go overboard.

The Artist has achieved his learner’s permit. This means that any time we go anywhere, he leaps to the door with an eager, “Can I drive?”

So far I have left his driving practice in the capable hands of my husband, the Alpha Geek. AG has a lot more patience than I do (for example, he’s married to me), and is better at teaching people—I’ve often thought he would make a good college instructor. I don’t have any skill at teaching people anything, particularly The Artist. I think something in our personalities is too much alike, and whenever I try to instruct him we just wind up frustrated with each other.

So far he’s only been driving AG’s car. I figure he’ll start driving mine after he’s had a little more practice. Say, twenty years. Have I mentioned how much I love my car?

The stray cat has been hanging about quite a lot these days. Possibly because I’ve been feeding him.

Since he’s been chasing off all the other candidates for my new cat, he must want the job. So I bought a pair of small food dishes and a bag of kibble, and started putting out food and water for him. He’s no dummy, he caught on quickly that I’m now the Food Lady. When I come out of the house he’ll perk up and keep an eye on me to see if it’s lunch time.

He still won’t let me come anywhere near him, of course. But he hangs around. One afternoon I pulled in to the driveway to find him waiting at the end of it, with the typical “Where have you been?” cat look. He knows afternoons are when I’m supposed to put out the chow.

I think he may have some other suckers providing food. At first he would gobble it all up at once; now he’ll leisurely eat a bit and leave the rest for later. He also doesn’t look as ragged as he did last summer. I suppose he’s kind of a community cat.

My husband remarked “I think it’s funny that you found a way to have a cat anyway.”

My next project is to devise some kind of shelter to keep rain out of his food.